We all piled out the front door and got to the barbaric tower - and sure enough there were two fluorescent-jacket-wearing despatchers standing out of the rain. The stairs were absolutely soaking and very slippy. All in all, a highly unsatisfactory arrival. Whatever about the inertia of the staff, the design is just ridiculous.

Not meaning to be smart,but how do you propose that the design be improved? While I will agree that the flooring in the towers is nasty and can be slippery apart from adding some form of heavy duty matting there is not a lot which can be done....apart from installing the airbridges!

Interestingly WW dont seem to use the airbridge at ORK, and even more strangely they dont use the rear doors for disembarkation either....at least in my experience. That siad they are still provide a much better schedule on ORK-MAN/BHX than EI do.

Brian.

With due respect - Cork has a fairly high rainfall and the flooring should have been specced for that - it is slippy in the rain and that doesn't help perceptions..

I came down from Dublin last week on Aer Arann and unfortunately 2 crew members were deadheading behind me so I got to listen to them exchanging scuttlebutt with the on-duty crew for most of the journey. Now I know the names of the foolish people in Aer Arann and who has been reported for what etc etc. Loadings were heavy on both outward and return journeys.

I did notice that air travel involves a lot of buses now -bus to the plane in Cork, bus to the plane in Dublin, bus off the plane in Lux, bus to the plane in Lux, bus to the plane in Fra (curiously Lufthansa don't have a row 13 in their A319 ), bus to the plane in Dub.

Lanzarote
 

Sorry if this is old news, but I've just noticed that XL Airways will fly Cork - Lanzarote on Thursdays from May.

Maybe it is a sign of things to come but there is an XL 737-800 overnighting at Cork tonight due out in the morning on a rugby charter to Rome for the Italy Vs Ireland rugger came. A Monarch A300 is also due in at aroud 0845 later today from Gatwick on another Rome charter for the big game along with a Hawker 800 bizjet due out around the same time. A nice few extra pax there for Cork Airport.

There has been a few other good bizjet movements at Cork also in the last few days so much so that on Monday or Tuesday a visiting Challenger 604 had to reposition to the remote parking area at snn airport for parking. This must surely support the case for more bizjet parking being made available at Cork Airport. I mean, you cant lose with it, can you? Money for jam! :}

Lack of Parking at Cork
 

Tell that to the OCC Tom

Multi storey carpark
 

Is it just me or is the design fairly brutal ? There is very little directional signage and what is there is colour coded so on level 1 it's blue and unilluminated. The carparks in town have plenty of illuminated yellow signs pointing the way. Interestingly it said level 2 was full but yet there was at least a dozen spaces...I note that the intercoms are still "temporarily" out of order.

The walk across to the lifts was like the Arctic today and what genius designed a covered walkway with slatted sides ideal for the rain and sleet to blow through ?

CAA Stats
 

Some CAA Stats for 2006 for routes from Cork:
Gatwick 323,278 +145,172
Heathrow 425,516 -8,630
Stansted 290,569 -147,815
Belfast 42,858 +2,368
Birmingham 116,866 +10,153
Bristol 19,943 +5493
Cardiff 20,672 -8,686
Durham 26,015 +9,377
Edinburgh 47,813 +8,484
Glasgow 9,336 -2321
Leeds Bradford 6,788 -951
Liverpool 77,941 +11,381
Manchester 75,871 -36,788
Newcastle 31,732 +27,409
Newquay 6,219 +6,219
Southampton 13,793 -1,421

Interesting to see that big drop in Cork-Stansted was almost equal to the big increase in Cork-Gatwick. However a decrease of over 10,000 passengers on the crucial Cork-London route, but still well over 1,000,000 passengers. Also a big drop on Cork-Manchester. The Aer Arann routes seem to be doing alright with Edinburgh in particular up by over 20% despite Ryanair starting Shannon-Edinburgh.

New terminal
 

The plans for the new terminal designed by Jacobs provided for airbridges, covered walkways, adequate floor space etc.

It is obvious that a hatchet job was done on the original design by Aer Rianta/DAA in order to save money. This coupled with the debt issue means we are now left with an Irish solution to the politicians problem by the Banks of The Lee

Noticed in the Sunday Times that Aer Rianta may benefit from 450m+ from the sale of their stake in BHX. Adding this to all of their recent sell-offs surely EICK could expect a better deal on the financing of the airport which THEY (dublin) commissioned?

I know we've been having a discussion here about the potential of flights from the US to ORK/vv, but what's the regulatory situation. Once Open Skies is approved, as now looks likely on Thursday/Friday :ok:, what are the consequences for ORK. DUB is tied to SNN in terms of being 3:1 until 2009, but are there any restrictions on ORK? I don't think so, but can anyone confirm?

Assuming there aren't, I agree that a Fly Globespan service (or similar would be ideal); indeed, Y2 can now fly to/from ORK and the US as often as it wishes, using 738s, 757s or whatever it wants. I do think ORK should be of interest to some US carriers operating '57s; I'm sure there is quite a considerable "Corkonian diaspora" in the NE of the US - BOS, NYC, even PHL, so it should be worth one of them having a look and with all due respect to Y2, having a "name", with the marketing power, not to mention the connectivity of CO/DL/US at their hubs, should be quite a boost to Cork.

Not sure if the interim Ireland/U.S. arrangement retains all previous elements other than the DUB/SNN ratio. If it does, the only T/A service permitted to U.S. or Irish carriers from Cork is on a charter basis. One further piece of info.- Minister Cullen has continued to refer to the originally-planned expiry date of the interim agreement (March 2008) as being retained, despite the delay in concluding the E.U./U.S. agreement.

As far as I am aware, there is an annex to the proposed OS deal relating to the stopover and the phaseout period. So, apart from that, every other aspect of the OPEN SKIES deal takes precedence over existing deals, which cease to have effect. Thus, any limitation on ORK re using Irish aircraft or having to operate them as charters would seem to be out the window?

That said and in reference to your second point, there is nothing to stop Ireland and the US deciding that they no longer wanted to go ahead with the deal agreed in Nov 05 and that the 18 month "phaseout" period applied from then. In that case, we would have full open skies from next March. From Cork's vantage point, that makes life a lot easier - no limitations, so silly rules, no more nonsense. :ok:

No more lame excuses either as to why Cork can't have transatlantic flights.

Hmmm now that the open skies is sorted out completely when can we see some US carriers taking up positions at ORK, AA is a likey one with a 757 from BOS to ork and maybe DL from JFK to ORK or CO from Newark to ORK, that would be a great service! Any thoughts.

I'd tend to be a little pessimistic about what we're likely to see immediately. The only one of those that I would see having a 50% chance of happening is Co to Newark.

Knowing the local population, they will continue to trek up to Shannon because they want to fly to New York, not Newark...

Welcome to Dublin!
 

By the look of how things are set to develop- see Dublin Airport thread, we (those of us living in the Western or Southern regions) had all better get used to the idea of trekking to Dublin to fly transatlantic. What a pain that's going to be! Let's hope that regional Irish airports get some share of the "Open Skies" goodies, otherwise it won't have done much good to the half of the nation's population living within driving distance of Knock, Shannon and Cork.

Cork-Dublin
 

All out war continues. FR's latest press release highlights the fact that RE have had 49 cancellations in the period Feb06-Feb07 while FR have only had 9. When you consider RE operate 7 flights a day, 49 flights cancelled over a whole year doesn't sound much.

Things have gone quiet at Cork recently. Any word on any new routes for the winter season??

Aerlingus
 

Aerlingus met CAA recently but no word on new routes from them. Hopefully the 4 320's will stay based at Cork for Winter 2007/8 but I wouldn't bet on it.

There are a number of destinations that aren't bookable for the Winter - Alicante, Birmingham, Faro, Manchester, Nice.

While a few have been cancelled for the Winter in previous years, it would suggest that options are being kept open as there's almost an aircraft's worth of rotations not bookable.

A pal of the family is due out to SXF in the mornin' and even as late as Monday evening the outbound fare less taxes is just Euro 29. Kind of troubling when the fare is so relatively low? Mind you, the reduction to just two a week to SXF from four a week in the period from January to March does not help due to lack of flexibility with days. Sure, it is a matter of managing the scarce resources by EI but you would think they would have at least left Berlin at 3 a week to give it every chance of working for the summer and that it will not be an opportunity lost?

The mess over Manchester has all ready been discussed. Let us hope that the EI planners in Dublin give a bit more credible thought to Cork once this summer is out of the way and that a better plan is sorted for the autumn and winter season.

For the summer IT season on Sundays it looks like both an Astraeus 757 and Monarch 757 should be both sharing the Cork ramp around the same time. Nothing too wrong with that.

Fair play to Aer Arann for plugging away and not yielding to Ryanair. If nothing else Cork people love the underdog in the might of such a foe in the RE vs FR battle! :D Who knows, I might even try DUB myself!